Oink Oink Swine Flu Label Here To Stay – WHO

The influenza strain linked to 152 deaths in Mexico should be called “swine flu,” the World Health Organization said, rejecting calls from pork producers and an animal-health group to rename the virus.

The flu strain that has sickened people in Mexico, the U.S., Canada, Spain, New Zealand and Scotland hasn’t been observed in pigs and appears to advance through human-to-human transmission, Bernard Vallat, the head of the World Organization for Animal Health, said in an interview yesterday.

The nominal link to pigs has prompted Russia and China to ban pork imports from Mexico and parts of the U.S., while Indonesia plans to destroy imported pork and other swine products. Thailand has told officials to call the strain “Mexican flu.” At the World Health Organization, the malady is called “swine flu” because the virus is of the type that affects pigs, said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general for health security and environment.

Swine Flu Label Angers Pig Farmers

A Mexican woman and her child wear masks as she walks inside of a metro station in Mexico City April 25, 2009. (REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez)

The top agency for health in farm animals said Mexico’s outbreak of deadly influenza was unleashed by a pathogen mixed from bird, human and hog viruses and branded the term “swine flu” as wrong and harmful to pig farmers.

The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said the pathogen was “not a classic human virus… but a virus which includes (in) its characteristics swine, avian and human virus components.”

“The virus has not been isolated in animals to date. Therefore, it is not justified to name this disease swine influenza,” the Paris-based OIE said.

It said that science would show whether the virus was circulating among farm animals and the outcome should determine whether countries were justified in banning pig imports.

Barbados On Swine Flu Alert!

Health authorities announced the implementation of a national action plan to mitigate the deadly virus that has claimed several lives in Mexico and spread to other countries including two of Barbados’ key tourist markets – the United States and Canada.

Officials were also monitoring the situation with two local sports teams – football and polo – who are set to return from Mexico “in the near future”, indicating they would have to report to port health officials on their arrival back home.

The island’s heightened state of action was announced by Minister of Health, Donville Inniss, and Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Joy St. John, following an emergency meeting of all major public sector agencies and some private bodies at the Pan-American Health Organisation’s Dayrell’s Road, Christ Church headquarters.

Key provisions of the national plan, influenced by the World Health Organisation’s decision to deem the current swine flu outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern” included: